


for a few silver pieces

by meios



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Judas/Jesus parallels, Kissing, Knives, M/M, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: say my name and his in the same breath / i dare you to say they taste the same





	for a few silver pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hardtodestroy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardtodestroy/gifts).



The voice is modulated, easy enough to do from behind a seamless helmet like this one, but there’s no masking the evident streethood drawl of lower Gotham, of the way the inflections are still clear, like he’s just waiting to be found, buried back up. Bruce can barely wheeze a laugh, humorless in its irony, with a gun trying to crush his windpipe.

 

His own mask, it’s been pulled back, cowl useless when one knows the codes to unlock it. His own defense system has been short circuited, and the city around them has long since halted, stewing in its own funk at the very bottom of the food chain. Less than maggots, these people believe themselves to be: they’ll writhe with the best of them, the higher ups making it harder to escape, easier to _escape_ with a quick fix.

 

When Bruce inhales, it’s all gunpowder and weed. He exhales, “Jason,” like it’s a prayer.

 

To his credit, the Red Hood doesn’t visibly flinch nor does he stammer as he curses and replaces the gun with his boot, kicking up high enough to pin a standing Bruce to the wall. The chains that hold him there rattle with the restraint Bruce tries to exhibit, the inability to fight back harder to believe than the fact that he’s seeing ghosts again.

 

“Your little bird’s dead,” spits the Hood, vitriol potent. He holsters the handgun he’s been holding, releases Bruce’s throat from its steel-toed prison, and, as if out of nowhere, pulls out a knife. Its blade shines in the dim streetlights, cared for and polished, the handle a rich mahogany, emblazoned with a J. “You buried him.”

 

The blade makes a quick swipe at Bruce’s cheek, leaving only crimson, and the Hood presses his body up against the Bat like a battering ram. “I should do what the Joker did to the bird, shouldn’t I?” asked the Hood to his audience.

 

The rats concur, mouths foaming.

 

Like he’s smiling behind the helmet, there’s a flash and then only pain, a twisting sharp pain in Bruce’s side, between the meshes of Kevlar and chainmail, and from within his tortured esophagus, a groan arises, zombies in the graveyard. Another flash, more pain. It happens with quick, methodical stabs, learned and practiced.

 

“ _Jason_!” Bruce tries. He’s met only with a laugh,

 

“Jason ain’t here!” shouts the Hood, holding the knife up to his throat, tracing it lightly. “Leave a fucking message!”

 

“I’m sor—”

 

“Shut _up_!”

 

Lodged in his shoulder, the knife finds home, and with a twist, Bruce grunts and shivers in pain, setting his jaw against any emotion that bubbles forth. Unmasked like this, Bruce shrivels against the lights, like a man and not a knight of the night, like the physical pain is but a distraction to the storm behind his eyes. He levels his gaze with the mechanical stare of the Red Hood, whispers, “Let me look at you.”

 

“No.”

 

“If you’re gonna kill me—”

 

“You ain’t in the position to make demands, old man.”

 

Another blade, smaller, cuts under his jaw, and their breathing mixes, heavy, hypnotic. Bruce doesn’t dare blink, not this close, and when he says the name again, the Hood bristles, breathes, “Talk about him ’n me in the same fucking breath. Taste the same? Like the little boy you killed? Or the man who’s gonna return the fuckin’ favor?”

 

His lips are close enough to ghost against the edgeless helmet. “Not a killer.”

 

“You _are_.”

 

“You’re not.”

 

Another pain in his right hand, sharp like stigmata, piercing through the flesh and out the other side, buried in the wall like Christ. The Hood’s shoulders are trembling, body like a leaf in autumn, like a boy in a tantrum. His jacket makes him look bigger, the belts and holsters around his waist superfluous, but too much like a utility belt to be ignored. Bruce, in the haze of blood he’s found himself in, counts three handguns, a submachine gun, and enough blades to supply a hospital.

 

“Half the city’s dead,” says the Hood.

 

“Only half,” answers the Batman.

 

The Hood pauses then, and then reels back, and Bruce is ready when it comes: the punch, the shattering of his nose, the burst of red water like Niagara that he spits to the ground, droplets like stars on the pavement.

 

“You changed.”

 

“I know.”

 

A pause. Another stab to his other shoulder, deep, severing muscles as if mere butter.

 

“Jason,” he says.

 

“No.”

 

“I wanted to.”

 

“You _didn’t_.”

 

“Look at how it changed you,” pleads Bruce, allowing a slight tilt of his syllables to permeate, break free from himself, the pain wracking his very control, stone-willed and cold.

 

“He’d be _dead_ , not me.”

 

“But you’re al _ive_ —!” Bruce attempts to clench down on his lip, bloodied now, but in better shape than his left hand, trying vainly to make a fist around the large knife found in it. He hangs from his chains and from his cross, head beginning to loll. He tells himself, in his mind, that this is not pain.

 

No, pain is seeing the helmet being finally, _finally_ lifted, and seeing the burn on the boy’s cheek, the streaks of premature white, the green eyes that are too old for this young body they hide in. It’s seeing scar after scar, the little ones from the stitches the mortician had place in his mouth to keep it shut for the funeral and the big ones from the explosion like the one covering most of his nose. It’s seeing unadulterated hatred burn like funeral pyres from him. It’s being covered in something akin to ice upon seeing a boy long since dead, a boy with splinters from his coffin still under his nails.

 

The audience has long since left, drugged out and bugged out. Stragglers mill about, dedicated.

 

“Am I?” asks Jason.

 

Almost hysterically, Bruce says, “ _Yes_ ,” like another sermon, another oath, another ritual. Jason stoops down and hammers a sharp piece of metal into his thigh, but that is not pain. Bruce says his name again.

 

“ _Enough_!” shouts the boy, because he is just a boy: scared and alone and restless like the spirits around him, and he’ll ball up his fists and ready another knife and Bruce will shred through his lip again, crown of thorns shaped like bat ears.

 

“I loved you.”

 

“ _Shut up_!”

 

“Dynamic Duo, you ’n me.”

 

“He’s _dead_!”

 

“Come here.”

 

And Jason does like a hurricane, a breath like a death rattle smothered between them until mouths open and tongues find their places, and Jason is punching the wall next to Bruce’s head, and there’s wetness through the grime there, holy water. Communion in the streets, under the clouds and there is fear palpable in every moment passing them by, and there’s something cold pressed to his temple that is not a knife and Bruce is so tired but so aware and Jason does not pull away when he pulls.

 

After a while, he pulls on his helmet, two silver casings still smoking at his feet.


End file.
